Legislative Analyst Rates CDT's Project Management Office

The state Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) has recommended that the Legislature clarify and affirm the mission of the California Department of Technology’s Project Management Office (PMO), which it says should eliminate a potential conflict of interest and tackle bigger, more complex projects.

The Legislature in 2014 approved creation of the PMO to “meet a critical need in the state for project management expertise and help the state avoid the high-profile IT failures of the past,” says the CDT website.

The new report, issued Dec. 7 by Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, finds that so far, results are mixed. 

On the one hand, the PMO won praise from client departments for helping manage projects efficiently and effectively and making “significant contributions.” The report says those receiving help from PMO were “highly satisfied.”

But the analyst's report also pointed to a CDT reorganization in 2016 that brought two functions — project oversight and project management — under the same department ranking executive; those functions initially had been assigned to two separate executives, thus creating a “firewall” to preclude any potential conflicts of interest.

“Additionally,” the report says, “CDT implemented a policy change that significantly reduces the number and complexity of IT projects eligible for PMO services.” Under the new policy, “the PMO will now primarily serve smaller, low-complexity projects, which is not in line with the Legislature’s intent when it established the office.” 

The report says the Legislature should reaffirm the PMO's original mission.

In a statement to Techwire on Thursday, the CDT said: “The California Department of Technology ... takes seriously the important role its Project Management Office serves in ensuring the successful delivery of statewide technology projects. CDT has reviewed the report issued by the Legislative Analyst’s Office and will carefully evaluate its findings and recommendations.”

Among those recommendations:

— Reassert the PMO’s original objectives: “Provide direct project management services to the most complex IT projects and to engage projects that may be or already are challenged due to project management deficiencies.”

— Re-establish the firewall between oversight and project management. “We recommend the Legislature require in statute that CDT maintain an organizational firewall ... similar to the firewall that existed prior to the most recent reorganization.”

— Clarify that the PMO act independently “in a way that relieves departments’ concerns” about the potential conflict of interest. “This would ease sponsoring departments’ concerns of inappropriate and unnecessary information sharing between the PMO and CDT oversight and cultivate an open pathway of communication between the PMO and sponsoring departments,” the report says.

In the conclusion of his 17-page report, Taylor writes: “We found that the PMO was showing success toward meeting the original legislative intent by first establishing the internal processes and capacity to ultimately scale up to larger, more complex projects. However, given recent developments, we have concerns about the path forward for the PMO and its ability to succeed and meet the Legislature’s original expectations.”

“Our recommendations enable the Legislature to reassert the original intent of the PMO to centralize project management services and improve the state’s success in implementing IT projects by equipping departments with the necessary expertise and capacity,” the report says. “Additionally, we note that even with the continuation of the PMO as originally envisioned, there is still room to continue the decentralized approach to project management for departments with the capacity to do so.”

Assemblyman Ian Calderon, D-La Puente, who's the majority leader and co-chair of the California Technology and Innovation Caucus, issued the following statement to Techwire on Thursday night: “It's important that the PMO continues to meet its goals and lives up to its original legislative intent. The State Assembly will be focusing more on legislative oversight — specifically over state agencies and their efficacy  in the coming year. Integrating technology within state agencies to help better serve our constituencies continues to be a priority of the California Technology and Innovation Caucus."